Semper Jab

I've moved to Santa Barbara, CA. Does anyone know of a respectable muay thai gym down here? I also want to try tai chi if anyone knows any place I can learn that here. Thanks.

San Diego City Boxing. http://www.cityboxing.com/

All right. I can understand that. Strength would have a role when two people are equally skilled.

After reading it twice, I understood what you were saying about this 20 year old karateka. But...what again is the pressing question?

I say continue doing your 16 oz gloves w/bags. But w/o gloves, shadow boxing can probably help you relax, thereby increasing your speed.

When I was 16 I thought I was too old to start, haha. Cuz I was motivated by movies and Jet Li and Jackie Chan obviously started way younger. But what actually carried them, and is carrying me now, is their awesome work ethic. But I didn't realize this until now that I'm 18 and wasted two years playing video games and mouthing off on forums.

Does anyone here fence? I've heard that it's similar to boxing and I wanted to try it out and see if it could complement my training. Is it worth the time away from boxing?

Come on now, 7s? Even the farmer with the shotgun when the saiyans first landed had a 5.

I think this is what Aodhan was getting at. You would be too stiff to do stretching stretching, and yes, then you would risk hurt something. But do dynamic stretches, go through the motions that you would while running, arm swings, knee lifts, maybe light calisthenics like jumping jacks. It's still important to stretch after, because when you stop running, that's when your muscles catch up to you and start cramping (which is why whenever I raced, cooldowns hurt the most). The best thing to do is probably wait until you catch your breath so you can focus on stretching technique and not bounce because of your after-run energy, it also gives you time to not feel like throwing up anymore.

We say hella in Norcal. Yes, just norcal.

Is Nike better than Adidas? You just have to find something for yourself.

Our heavy bags are all fairtex. Our head trainer's a former fairtex instructor. Whatever works.

As far as a lot of people are concerned, full contact fighting is the grain of effective fighting, of martial artists knowing what the heck they're doing. But the MMA/Knockdown/Full Contact tournaments are classified by weight rankings, making a clear statement that fighting a skilled heavier opponent a mistake. What, then, is the street value of the dominant ring styles, if you were to defend yourself against a bigger offender? What martial art is it, in your opinion, that actually fits in the self defense realm? Is it that you would just use different tactics because there are no longer any rules when you fight outside the ring? Or do these arts lack something?

You can throw a muay thai roundhouse and not need your shoes at all...

Run your feet off. Ease yourself out of run/walk combinations and get solid miles in. Getting a good stamina base will leave you one less thing to worry about since going back in, you want to worry more about technique than anything else. Making sure you got the basics. Get used to boring repetition also, throwing a few kicks every once in a while doesn't do you much good. If you're broke, I suggest doing calisthenics for now. I'm a broke college student too, I know how it is. Pushups/situps (and its many sister exercises), pull/chinups, dips, bodybuilders, squats/jumping squats, and anything else you have in mind. Once you have stamina, mix in speed intervals to your running workout, 2-3 times a week, so you can rebuild your anaerobic base also.

bob and weave, get outside punch but remain in distance, continue by parrying his attacking arm and chain punch the hell out of his now opened side, or drop elbows.

There were newcomers to the gym and I was practicing my roundhouse kick on the heavy bag before class started so they were watching me. On one of my kicks my supporting leg slipped as I pivoted on it and fell flat on my back.

Find a modern wushu school for aerial kicks, but, it wouldn't be your answer for an art that "would work well in combination with tkd on the streets" No aerial kick will. Hapkido should do you well and coupled with wrestling, I think you'll be all right from there.

For the sake of loving submissions and underdogs, I'm with Royce.

Yup, aerobic work. Run it off, the goal here is less body fat if you want that six pack to show.

My roommate asked me, "Can you teach me how to kill someone?"

Actually, he was doing hsing-yi (the linear) and bagua (the circular), or wushu-fancy-movie variants of it.

Watching chinese shaolin movies and eventually, once upon a time in china. I wanted to learn how to do all that cool stuff, so I started out in tkd, and later moved on to a shaolin mckwoon (grr...). But eventually the flashy syndrome wore off on me and I wanted to know stuff that worked. Mainly because of WWF Smackdown and I thought fighting was more cool than flying kicks and cartwheels. In all impatience and immaturity, I became a disgruntled student and the sifu challenged me, told me to do a roundhouse kick so he could show me that his stuff worked. I mean, if I knew what was coming at me, I'm pretty sure I could counter it too even as a yellow sash. So then I just stopped and tried to research stuff so I can learn how to actually defend myself. I found boxing. But now I can't say that it's a happy ending because I don't feel any longer that self defense is too much of a deal for me (even though sparring still is). I want to indeed go back to traditional martial arts, to a real school this time, and to learn an old art to accompany my sweet science. And so, that's my inspiration, a renewing motive and of course Jet Li.

I think for the most part it's what you put into it that matters. If you want to talk to the instructor about whatever condition it is that you have, he'll be able to customize your training. Unless your area is really rich in MA schools like SF, CA then you're better off looking at schools than styles. If you had a problem with shotokan, I'd say do something with higher stances as it'll be less of a problem for your knees. Kickboxing or Muay Thai probably a good place to try.

I think that it'd help your training if every other day mix up that daily regiment and put focus on stamina, put in some roadwork and run decent mileage.